Events of the Day (Page 22)

As I write this, we here in the Buffalo Niagara region are awaiting the increased pounding we’re going to receive as Hurricane Sandy’s course takes her on a path that will give us what is, compared to what the Jersey Shore and NYC Metro areas are receiving, a glancing blow. But a glancing blow from a hurricane, even as it diminishes to a tropical depression, can be quite a hairy thing. At this point, what we’re expecting is high wind and a lot of rain. The ground is already wet from rains in the days ahead, and quite soft; theDown the rabbit hole….

You’d think that after doing the whole blogging and social networking thing for as long as I’d have, I wouldn’t be surprised that a tweet I quickly tossed off after reading about what a cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch Mitt Romney is actually got some attention, but…yeah, it’s a nice surprise. In a collection of reaction tweets to Romney’s waving-of-the-flag for conservative assholedom, Andrew Sullivan quoted mine. Woot! Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

I re-post this every year on this date. It is the first piece of fiction I wrote after the awful events of 9-11-01. “The City of Dead Works” There is never any rest for me, the Ferryman of the Dead. I pole my barge across the black waters and up to the pier. So many wait this time, many more than usual. I wonder what has happened, what event has sent me this many. “Come aboard,” I say. “I will take your coin for passage.” One by one they file past me, each handing to me the coin that theyDown the rabbit hole….

Actually, this isn’t my only thought on the subject, but it’s the only one that I feel like posting, as my remaining thoughts are conflicted, given my longstanding general support of Second Amendment rights (although I don’t rise nearly to the belief, widespread though it seems to be, that the Second enshrines the most important of all rights by a towering margin — in fact, I’m not even convinced that the Second Amendment even says what most people think it says) and my equally longstanding squeamishness when it comes to guns (in short, I’ve never fired one, never held one,Down the rabbit hole….

This is a repost from July 4, one year ago today. Happy birthday, America! Here’s a really weird story. It’s so weird, I’m not sure the historians didn’t make it up out of whole cloth. It seems that around 235 years ago or so, some folks living in a place under the rule of a King decided that they didn’t much like the way that King was ruling them. At all. They pretty much decided, en masse, that their King was behaving, to use a current term, like a douche. Now, over the many centuries before these folks came along,Down the rabbit hole….

I really need to watch TED talks more often. Here, science fiction author Robert Reid delves a little into the mathematical claims of the movie and music industries when they rail against piracy. I always love when big numbers are thrown about, and no one questions them at all. I remember the Direct Marketing Association’s fierce opposition to the Federal Do Not Call List, on the basis that it would cost the economy something like two million jobs. A job hit of that magnitude, at once, would be an economic calamity of historic proportions, but that number just sat outDown the rabbit hole….